Our story begins on June 19, 1965, when the ship Marina di Scilla, operated by the company Caronte S.p.A., carried out the first private ferry crossing in the Strait of Messina on the Messina–Reggio Calabria route. Just three years later, in 1968, Tourist Ferry Boat S.p.A. charted its own route, a few miles shorter, between Messina and Villa San Giovanni.
Caronte & Tourist
For several decades, the two companies operated as competitors in the ferry transport of vehicles and passengers across the Strait of Messina, using traditional bidirectional ships. In doing so, they responded to a need that had until then remained unexpressed in the territories on both sides of the Strait: to bring Sicily closer to the mainland through constant connections.
At the beginning of the new millennium, in 2001, the shared desire for diversification by the two competing companies in the Strait led to their first joint project. This initiative, part of the groundbreaking "Autostrade del Mare" program, gave rise to the coastal shipping route between Messina and Salerno, operated by the jointly owned company Cartour. In short a collaboration began one that would culminate in 2003 with the merger of the two companies into the ferry operator we know today as Caronte & Tourist S.p.A.
